Mezzanine

Nutty that this wasn’t on here already

Wait a minute this wasn’t on the original list? Now I’m surprised it’s taken so long to get added to the users list. Makes me think everyone like me assumed it was on the first list… One of my go to albums for testing out sound systems this is an absolute classic. Up there with Portishead - Dummy as the two trio hop masterpieces.

On Mezzanine the band Massive Attack has move from a sould and trip hop style to something more. Blue Lines and Protection are also fantastic albums, but the collection of styles and soundscapes on Mezzanine is unbelievable. Their adaptation of Angel is mesmerizing and Teardrop is so full of beauty. Listening to this album gives me the goosebumps every time.

This was a five the moment I saw the title. Just a perfect album. The appearance of chilled, but so oppressive, so enclosing and so beautiful.

A trip-hop masterpiece and one of the best produced albums of all time. Angel is a stunning opener, Teardrop is ridiculously good, and Inertia Creeps is an anxiety-inducing delight. One that should have definitely been on here

If you had told me this was on the official 1001 list I woulda believed you. Should it take the place of Kid Rock's "Devil Without a Cause" from the same year? Probably.

My history with Massive Attack is a bit peculiar. I initially dismissed 'Unfinished Sympathy' and let the debut pass me by, only finding my way back to the band through my appreciation for Portishead, Tricky, and DJ Shadow. By the time Mezzanine arrived, I was ready for it, and it did not disappoint. To call this 'lounge' or 'chill-out' music is a massive disservice; this is dark, lugubrious, and ominous territory. The opener 'Angel' sets the tone perfectly: creeping and tense, with Horace Andy’s fragile vocals providing a brilliant contrast to the aggressive, heavy guitar riffs. This play of contrasts is what makes the album so high-caliber. Whether it’s the wonderfully languid and repetitive flow of 'Risingson' (which harbors something genuinely frightening beneath its Velvet Underground sample) or the driving, rhythmic tension of 'Inertia Creeps,' the album feels like one big, flowing progression of unease. A special mention must go to Elizabeth Fraser. Her heavenly, ethereal vocals on 'Teardrop' elevate the song to soaring heights, providing a moment of enchantment in an otherwise claustrophobic landscape. Even when the album briefly flirts with a softer sound on 'Exchange,' it never loses its edge. This isn't music for a quiet night by the fire; it’s an immersive, high-tension masterpiece that remains a personal favorite. An undisputed 5-star essential.

I always forget what this band is about. The name makes me think its some hardcore thing and then the music completely surprises me. Anyway I thought this was great. Trip Hop and its legion sub and side genres are not always my thing but this is a total package.

Perfection, and well worth being in the book

Like anyone else who knows this album I'm shocked it is not in the original list while lesser albums are. Well done to the submitter for spotting this omission. This has been a goto album over the years and never fails to induce a mood of dread and wonder. It's so insistent and compelling. There is almost nothing else like it. Favourite track is 'Man Next Door' written by the legend that is John Holt.

Rating: 8/10 Best songs: Angel, Risingson, Tearsrop, Man next door, Mezzanine

Classic

Lovely dark music to dream away to

Yes! Surprised this wasn't on the original list. Really great album. Love their sound.

Two in the original list but probably their best for the user list. Outside of being popular for the House intro, Mezzanine is an all around music for tv/movie intros and outros. It has such an ominous sound throughout while being an enjoyable laid back listen. It’s overall a very good album although I may not revisit it, there is still plenty to enjoy here. It is also Massive Attacks best from the ones on this list. 7.1/10

A perfect addition to this list. I already was familiar with “tear drop” which is an amazing song. Loved this album will listen again!

How is this not on the official list? One of the most important albums of all time. A classic from front to back and a genre defining statement.

Another one that should’ve been on the original list.

Fond memories of spinning this one up because I knew the House MD theme came from here, and then getting mostly music that’s hitting a different vibe. This one’s an all-timer, probably could bump one of their other albums off the main list

Masterpiece. Nothing more, nothing else.

How was this album not on the original list? I've really come to enjoy trip-hop as a genre, and this is one of the absolute peaks. Just awesome downtempo song after awesome downtempo song. Great beats, great vocals, lots of weird cool shit inbetween 5/5

The fact that this album was not included on the original 1001 list is criminal. Absolutely stellar album! Favourite songs: Teardrop, Dissolved Girl, Inertia Creeps, Group Four, Risingson, Angel, Black Milk Least favourite songs: Mezzanine 5/5

Outstanding masterpiece of an album. An astonishing omission from the original list and a fantastic submission to this one.

Utterly superb! A game changer! Should have been on the original list. This is one of my desert island albums. So dark, haunting and creepy yet stunningly beautiful.

Very nice. 4 stars.

Apparently very important ‘trip hop’ and so I will agree

Another one joining in wondering why this wasn't included over one of the other albums in the OG list. Saying that, I'm still not the largest Massive Attack fan. It's good stuff but a little long. My personal rating: 4/5 My rating relative to the list: 4/5 Should this have been included on the original list? Yes, but replace one of the Massive Attack albums.

Always enjoyed Massive Attack and this album was no different. Great sound and overall really enjoyable listen.

Trip hop, electronica. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

Mezzanine is really good, should've been on the original list for sure. A few well known tracks that absolutely set the tone of the album and it carries through the rest of them. Definite 4/5, falls short of 5 for me because of the overall weight of quality we've had on selections that I gave it to by comparison.

Enjoyed this more than the Massive Attack records on the main list and still don’t fully understand why trip-hop inevitably veers back to sounding like spy movie music, but pretty excellent overall.

Triphop is great, and this band is one of the cornerstones.

Strong case for inclusion in the original list IMO Only thing would be can the list sustain 3 Massive Attack albums? I'd argue yes.

Forgotten how good this is, i tend to go back to Blue Lines when I need a fix but this is great

While this album is clearly going to get a five-star review, it isn't perfect. It's tempting to say that the massive overuse of Massive Attack tracks in adverts, TV series opening themes, incidental music, phone hold muzak etc is not the fault of the people who made up Massive Attack - but it kind of has to be, hasn't it? I know that this album coincided with a huge shake-up of the those people, and that may explain a less "considered" attitude towards their licencing, but oversaturation does often have an impact on how one perceives and enjoys music. My personal story of this album comes from buying it from a record shop in Buxton in probably 1999 or 2000, but I'd heard it very many times before purchase from my art-school housemate who soundtracked my first six months living away from home with much trip-hop. Dear heavens, his mate Pinky was absolutely bloody gorgeous.

I remember Teardrop from my youth. Rad album through and through

I live in Bristol and grew up in the nineties. I used to catch the Portishead bus to school. I'm pretty much the target audience for this, and listened to it on heavy rotation.

A little story to start off this review that I already announce as very long, kiddies. When I was in my early twenties, I spent a two-week internship in a British private radio with two friends of mine. We were young, crazy about music, and French, and it was also the opportunity to work on our English language skills. One of those two friends had found this internship to hone his professional project of becoming a radio host and radio programmer (he succeeded in this project, he is now working in this exact position for a high-profile radio station in Switzerland). But the other friend and I were really just along for the ride, and we ended up not doing much in the radio HQ, while our more serious partner took on more professional-sounding duties. Which means we had all the time in the world to dig the crates filled with promotional CDs and vinyls sent to the station... I don't exactly remember the time of the year for this internship... In my memories, it must have taken place in summer 1997. And among those promo copies (including Portishead's single "Cowboys", another aesthetic slap in the face), there was an advance copy of Massive Attack's single "Risingson", released around nine months before *Mezzanine* finally came out... Long story short, it was exciting to discover the direction the Bristol outfit would take after *Protection*. I had followed them almost from the start, at the time of *Blue Lines*, and I was curious to see if 3D, Daddy G and Mushroom would outlive the slowly dying "trip hop" trend to explore new avenues and new music styles. And when I first spun the promo single, the music on it instantly blew my socks off. Oh, it was still "trip hop" alright. But it was a strand of it that felt so dark, so cavernous, and so unapologetically "gothic" that I was mindblown. 3D and Daddy G's whispering raps were as chill-inducing as ever, but the instrumental was a whole other level of uncompromising artistry for that era in time (that extraordinary drop of acid-tinged, dubplate sounds cutting the track in half like a knife cuts soft butter... my god!!!). My rather useless internship (rather useless for me, that is) quickly ended, and I spent the next nine months fretting with anticipation for the album to come. And the album did NOT disappoint. It started with a Horace Andy feature where the legendary Jamaican singer and usual Massive Attack collaborator covered his own song "Angel" (whose original version I had never heard back then). It was quite an unusual move given that Massive had favored using female vocal performers for their previous album openers. And yet instantly, that choice made a ton of sense, and perfectly introduced what the LP would be all about. The contrast between Andy's elated and lovelorn vocals about a woman angel falling from the sky and the pitch-black, obsessional bass rumble over which the Jamaican reggae legend sang was just damn cinematic perfection. And then, incredible surprise, all-out equally obsessive and full-blown hypnotic electric guitars started tearing up said overcast sky into pieces. Massive Attack were going "rock", believe it or not! But they were doing it with such self-confidence, such gravitas and such elegance, it was anything but a put-on act. I didn't realize it back then, but beyond being a fan of reggae, dub and hip hop, Massive's sonic mastermind 3D had also been heavily influenced by The Cure during his teenage years (hence why "10:15 Saturday Night" is very noticeably sampled in later album track "Man Next Door", more on that later). So I guess the stylistic jump was more of a surprise for the audience than it was for the band... What I also didn't realize back then is how fraught with tensions the recording sessions for *Mezzanine* had been (Mushroom departed the three-headed outfit not long after the album's release, by the way, never to return). What sounded like a self-confident aesthetic victory for me was actually the results of many hours of doubts, rows and disagreements, and given how dark the resulting music generally is, maybe that doesn't come off as a total surprise, all things considered. Yet Massive Attack still knew how to distinctively sound like themselves, in spite of the tensions. After "Risingson" in the second slot, indeed came "Teardrop", a third *massive* track in a row (no pun intended). Between "Unfinished Sympathy" and "Safe From Harm" (with Shara Nelson) in the first album, and "Protection" (featuring Everything But The Girl's Tracey Thorn) on the second, 3D, Daddy G and Mushroom had already made many of their fans shed tears of emotion though heartbreaking breakbeat-laced ballads in a quite recent past. But honestly, I had not expected them to outdo themselves in that particular department on their third album. And yet, here was "Teardrop", a cathedral of fragility and sweetness gently propelled by its synthetic string arpeggio and soft minimalistic beat. And that incredible track, now a classic and the platonic ideal of each and every "trip hop" song out there, also harbored the most devastating secret weapon among all the collaborators the band had ever worked with: Elizabeth Fraser. Her mellifluous voice, so precise, subtle and haunted, was a match made in heaven for this composition -- which, believe it or not, might have ended up in Madonna's repertoire if its main composer Mushroom had had his way after yet another fight with his bandmates. Jesus H. Christ, what a waste it would have been not to have Liz Fraser sing in that song... That was a close call, kiddies! Sheer artistic perfection, all the stars aligning, a bad choice avoided at the eleventh hour, all of this for an absolutely moving and transcendent result... In short, it was a miracle. The Cocteau Twins singer actually collaborated on three tracks for *Mezzanine*: "Teardrop", "Black Milk", and "Group Four", and they're all among the best songs ever recorded for the project. The second feels like aimlessly wandering in a nightly urban landscape, with that deep, unsettling bassline suggesting derelict buildings in the shadows, along with touches of delicate piano lighting the way like so many neon lamps in the distance. In comparison, the third song feels more like a swampy jam, and yet its final electric guitar build-up (yes, again!), over which Fraser haunts the proceedings like the ghost of a moth dizzy with the light of a flickering candle, is yet another bonkers moment. Worthy of note, a second female vocalist, Sara Jay, sings on another "trip-rock" cut during the course of the tracklist, the otherwise excellent "Dissolved". And she does a hell of a job on that one song as well, by the way. Yet it's Fraser who brings the deciding vocal touches making *Mezzanine* a timeless masterpiece. Not that Fraser and Jay are the only voices heard in the album, as you are already aware of. 3D and Daddy G are rapping on the twirling and spiraling "Inertia Creeps", layered with a treasure trove of traditional Turkish music samples giving a *Bladerunner* aura to the overall results. And the two men are heard again on the title-track, where the sinuous electric guitars writhe like snakes instead of exploding, to an equally effective outcome. Finally, Horace Andy returns to cover the terrific and memorable verses of "Man Next Door" (which is as much a John Holt song as it is yet another signature song of his given how the tune is associated with his career). Massive Attack do not merely sample The Cure here, they're also using a chopped-up loop taken from the drum parts of Led Zeppelin's "When The Levee Breaks". It's a testament to their talent that this drum part, so often sampled in the past for hip hop tracks, is barely recognizable here. Speaking of samples, a little aside related to the 1001 Albums Generator... The instrumental interlude "Exchange" -- later reprised as the LP's capper in a version on which Horace Andy diggs ad-libs -- is basically a jazzy loop taken from the end of a song performed by Isaac Hayes (who has unwittingly provided a couple of iconic samples for the trip hop genre). This particular song is "Our Day Will Come", a cover of an old hit by Ruby And The Romantics, whose rhythm 'n' blues music was written by Mort Garson -- the same Mort Garson who wrote and recorded that bizarre moog synthesizer album aimed at plants, "Mother Earth's Plantasia", that I discovered through the generator... Funnily enough, "Exchange" sounds like music that could play in shop selling plants itself. Or music that could play in a waiting room or an elevator... As such, it's a very secondary cut in *Mezzanine*. But if you imagine said waiting room as purgatory, or if you can picture this elevator as one going down and back from hell, as I do, this pretty ironic track is still part of the whole experience offered by this very dark record. Because yes, metaphorically speaking, 3D, Daddy G and Mushroom went through hell to create *Mezzanine*. But The hours of doubts and feverish self-questioning had paid off. Del Naja, Marshall and Vowles had been anything but complacent, they had paid attention to each and every little detail, again and again, obsessing over the tiniest thing with a constant convoluted haze of hemp hovering above their tired head. And as exhausting as the experience was, they had been right to do so. Not only was Massive Attack pushing the envelope sonically speaking, but they had also delivered what should be remembered as a magnum opus that was as unafraid to take risks as it was perfectly aligned with the late-nineties zeitgeist, fretting with apprehension because of the catastrophes that would surely come with the year 2000. In 2026, that particular pre-millenium angst is admittedly a thing buried in a past that's long gone by now. Yet quite a few catastrophes *did* surge, and those feelings of anxiety have only evolved into even uglier forms these days, which makes the music on *Mezzanine* feel as timeless as ever. You can even argue that the long shadow of this record is still reaching a wide array of music styles that are currently prominent (electronica, "lo-fi", hip hop, indie rock, some more experimental strands of post-punk...). As "trip hop" as the record still was, it was also ready to embrace the twists and turns of the 21st century. Did I see that coming? I guess I did. Back in 1997, it already made sense for me that this "Risingson" single I had put my hands on in that English radio station represented the music of the future. And maybe for once, the younger man that I was at the time had not been mistaken... 5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums. 10/10 for more general purposes (5+ 5) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 109 (including this one) Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 117 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 255 ---- Émile, *quatre* nouveaux messages pour toi au dessus, du *Solid State Survivor* de Yellow Magic Orchestra au *Atrocity Exhibition* de Danny Brown

Good trance-y music. Obviously one things of House MD every time.

4.5

Starts absolutely great, but towards the end I lost interest.

Surprised this wasn't in the original list.

Det är en ganska skön platta med många fina låtar.

Easily Massive Attack's best. Frontloaded, but mostly because the first three songs just so happen to be some of the greatest songs of all time, not because the others are bad or anything. Honestly, probably could have traded the entire rest of Massive Attack's discography from the original list and just have this one. I don't think there's anyone on the planet who doesn't consider this to be their magnum opus. Strong 4/5.

"Mezzanine" is the Massive Attack album that should have been on the list. It's definitely their strongest effort, and maybe not coincidentally their first without Tricky. Not necessarily a big fan of some of the Del Naja or Daddy G vocals though, either. While I couldn't get into the Cocteau Twins, Elisabeth Fraser's songs with Massive Attack are consistently their best, with "Teardrop" continuing to stand above the rest.

Well, I didn't necessarily need to have three Massive Attack albums on a list before I die, but I enjoyed this well enough. Dark and moody.

It's taken me a few runthroughs to 'get' Mezzanine, though I still feel I'm missing something given the massive critical acclaim. The atmospheric yet claustrophobic instrumentals are rapturous, yet I feel the world this album builds is just a bit too sparse and could be better populated. Add in some vocal focus a la Portishead and the LP would feel much more substantiated and impactful, though perhaps the minimalism is the point.

I could have sworn this had already popped up on my list…a good listen anyway. Not fully my kind of music but this has a certain something that appeals.

I will never understand the appeal of Massive Attack. I gave both albums in the original list two stars, but I’ll bump this one up a star for their politics.

The music is a 4. The vocals…not as good, especially the male vocalist. Inertia Creeps made me want to stop listening.

Angel // Teardrop //

The hypnotic approach of these Massive musicians is interesting; it's mostly trance music, and it generally feels organic and is easy to listen to without getting frustrated by its flowing sounds.

Do we really need ANOTHER massive attack album on the list? REALLY? I mean, aren't they pretty similar to each other?

After two Massive Attack albums on the original list, we get another one here. Still don't get it. Seems like Massive Attack was big at the time, but this is just background electronic music to me.

English 90s trip hop. Is this one of the most overly represented genres on the list?

Always thought their name was really subverting 2 I genuinely can't grasp why anyone would want to listen to this 1